First, this is a Tesla Motors Inc., in association with Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) partnership. Tesla, endlessly creative, right? KIUC is a 33,000-member electric power cooperative - off the radar for most major corporations, and Tesla, having just surpassed Ford in market value, is a major American company. The island of Kauai in the Hawaiian archipelago is emerging as a leader as it moves from fossil-based power generation to renewables, and deploys what ranks as one of the world’s largest arrays of lithium-ion battery packs.

The battery storage became operational in March and is expected to make solar power produced during the daytime available to customers well into peak demand periods after sunset. The rate 13.9 cents per kilowatt-hour (KWh) beats locally available alternative sources. The solar-plus-battery facility means that KIUC has achieved roughly 44% renewable generation

Because of the island location and the abundance of sunshine available, the cooperative experiences almost 100% renewable generation during daylight hours. Its board of directors saw that the only way it could continue to harness solar energy to meet its renewable energy goals was to find a way to store the electricity and use it to meet peak demand periods that occur after sunset. In stepped Tesla.

Another part of this story is that if offers hope to remote areas, which often rely on oil and are vulnerable to disruptions in availability and that market.

This is the classic "seed" story; from this relatively small project comes the making of a replicable, scalable solution - the tree.